A Dinner Invitation
by thewayiseethings
Summary: After receiving a special invitation for dinner from Doctor Lecter, Special Agent Will Graham and Alana Bloom decide to accept the offer. What they don't know is that this dinner won't be like the other ones, it will have a quite unordinary ending, a surprise that Hannibal Lecter was planning for a long time.
1. Prèparation

Hannibal closed the door and took a deep breath. The calm smile he had to fake for the last session with a patient vanished in the darkness of the room, in which now he could return feeling like himself: inspired. It was 5.00 pm and there was no time to waste. There was a dinner to prepare, and as he always said, guests can never be disappointed when it's about food, especially not the guests he was expecting that night: Will Graham and Alana Bloom.

Hannibal rushed into the kitchen, wore his Italy-made apron and took out of the shelf two wooden boxes. He opened the first one and and carefully browsed his handwritten recipes. Chicken Liver Pate, Peppercorn Niutton, Parmesan Crumbled Lambs Brains, Briskowsky Burgundy Sauce, Braised Beef Lungs: Yes, the Braised Lungs would have been quite perfect for that evening.

Then he opened the other small box, and took a long look at all those the business cards.

Meryl Nimerfro? No, by the smell her skin had, he could say that she was a smoker, and the lungs he was looking for had to be healthy and fresh.

Christopher World? Hannibal raised his head from the box and tried intensely to focus. If he recalled well, that poor man was one of those stressed employees that are thirty years old but look like they were on their late fifties because of all the worries and problems they have. No, he was looking for someone young, someone healthy.

Doctor Lecter moved the cuff of his silk shirt and looked at his watch. 5.40 pm. Was there still time to go hunting? No, there was no time and this dinner had to be just perfect, mostly because after the Dessert Froid he was planning on something new. Something big.

Darrell Ledgerwood! Yes, young man, jogger, healthy eater; he was the perfect prey for this plate.

After opening the fridge and taking out the still pink-colored lungs, Hannibal removed gently the piece of trachea and couldn't resist to smile: every time he came to the part of the recipe in which he had to cut the flesh, he just couldn't help it. It reminded him of his youth, as he was a junior surgeon, as he discovered his peculiar curiosity towards the human body and found the holding of a scalpel in his right hand extremely pleasant, as if it was a scepter. The soft curvature of the flesh as it came in contact with the blade was like the tuning of the musical instruments before the beginning of the opera, holding a beating heart in his hands made him feel like he was the most powerful man in the whole world, as if he was capable of anything. He closed his eyes, a slight thrill ran through his whole body.

Subsequently he violently stepped on the meat and carefully dusted it with flour. As the lungs came in contact with the warm wine on the pan, the fire underneath burned up in a powerful flame, caused by his quick wrist movement. Hannibal closed briefly his eyes and thought about his guests. Alana Bloom was an interesting person, it's true, but she wasn't comparable to his special guest. There was something about Will Graham, something dark and mysterious that he found interestingly attractive, even if he could't tell exactly what it was. Maybe it was his peculiar skill that made him a special FBI agent, the ability to deeply empathize with serial killers, a skill that made him day after day so incredibly vulnerable and unstable. Hannibal was a psychiatrist, his job was to understand people and read their minds, yet the more he tried to analyze Will, the less he could get a clear view: all he could see was darkness. Thick and deafening darkness. He just couldn't see him like the other human beings, like a prey to play with.

Will had a monster inside, who was getting more and more powerful, created by the evilness he had to face everyday, and doctor Lecter found it incredibly fascinating. But that night, that night was going to change everything. The move that Hannibal was planning for weeks now, would have revealed Will's true semblance, it would have awakened his monster.

The doorbell rang; Hannibal raised his head from the pan and smiled calmly. It was showtime.


	2. Entrée Chaude

"Sir, are you okay?"

Will opened his eyes and looked around. Where was he? It looked like a forest, he could hear a waterfall in the distance.

"Sir, how long have you been here?" Will turned to the man and tried to focus on him to understand what he was saying. He could say he was some sort of forest ranger, from the green jacket he was wearing. He looked at his feet: they were covered in mud. He started to shiver, it was so cold.

"Do you know where you are?" Will raised his head and looked at the ranger, intensely. "No.", he said, and slowly glanced down. "We're in Plymouth." "What time is it?", he asked. "It's 6.30 am, sir, what do you remember exactly?" Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "My name is Will Graham, it's 6.30 am and I'm in Plymouth, Minnesota."

A dark car slammed on the brakes and stopped on the road side, Jack got out of the car and ran towards the forest ranger showing him his badge. "Jack Crawford, FBI. Where is he?" he asked, almost concerned. The ranger took a brief look at the badge and pointed at Will, who was sitting nearby a tree holding a blanket and gazing into space. Jack made him sit in the backseat and started the car, to turn the heat on. Then he looked at Will from rear-view mirror for a while, trying to figure out what to say. "Will?" "Yes?" "Have you been sleepwalking again?" "What do you say, Jack? Does it look like I came here for a walk?" "Should I be concerned?" Will looked away and tried to relax. "Should I be concerned, Will?", Jack insisted, waiting for a reassuring answer. "No, Jack. You shouldn't."

The phone rang. Will looked at it for a while, as if he just woke up again, and then decided to answer up. "Will? Will are you okay? What happened?" "Alana? No, I mean, yes, everything is okay." "It happened again, didn't it?" "What? No." "Will, please. This job is slowly consuming you. I'm not telling you as a therapist, I'm telling you as a friend. Please, just tell Jack that you're having second thoughts." "Alana, please, stop. I can handle this. This skill that I have, it's saving lives. Of course, it might have some small collateral damages." "Small collateral damages? Is this what you call hallucinating and sleepwalking?" "I have to go, Jack needs me." "We will discuss this again, Will. Seriously. Tonight we're eating at Hannibal's. Okay?" "Okay. Bye."

Jack came closer and closer. Will tried to focus on him, but it was like the world around him was melting. What Alana said was true. He was slowly losing his mind, day after day. And he didn't know what to do. It was like as if there was someone else with him, in that body, and it.. he was trying to take control, slowly. All those murders, those emotions, were consuming him, piece after piece, case after case. The cases! That's what mattered, didn't it? He closed cases. He tried so hard to become an FBI agent, back when he was younger. "He's mentally unstable.", they said. "He can't be in a law enforcement agency if he's mentally unstable." But now, now that Jack Crawford finally noticed him, he became a "special agent", at least this is what they called him. It's like a real agent, only that it's not. Will smiled for a moment. Could he really handle that situation? Could he really control the beasts that were roaring and scratching inside of him?

"Will, we have a new case in Duluth.", Jack said, with a doubtful look. "Okay, let's go.", said Will, smiling at him calmly. This is what he did. Deep inside, he was fighting with the darkness, with all the strength that he had left, but on the outside, on the outside he just tried to smile. All the time. "My name is Will Graham, it's 11 am and I'm on my way to Duluth, Minnesota."

Will closed his eyes. Slowly, one after the other, the policemen and the guys from the forensics disappeared; now it was just him.. and the victim, a woman around the late forties. "I come home from work. I find out that she's cheating on me. I'm mad, so mad I could cut her throat and watch her die, trying to stop the bleeding and slipping in her own blood, I actually do. But it's not enough, no, she needs to pay. So I cut each and every part of her, it doesn't matter if she already passed out, she needs to pay. When I'm done, there's another emotion that's overwhelming me, more than the anger. It's guilt. What did I do? What can I do to repair what I did? There's just one thing: I broke her, now I have to fix her. All I have to do is put the pieces back together and everything will be alright. This is my design." Will smiled and tried to open his eyes, his work was done, but he couldn't: he wasn't alone. It wasn't just the victim and him there, there was someone else. Will could feel his body warming up, more and more, he almost could't breathe. Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out!

"Will?" "Will, what do you see?", Jack asked, trying to wake him up. Will turned at him, with his eyes still closed, and calmly answered: "Darkness.".

"Can you hear me, Will?" "Will!" Will opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, right there, where he lost control, which meant that he didn't sleepwalk. Jack was shaking him and they were surrounded by paramedics. "The husband did it.", Will said. "What?" "It was the husband.", he said, louder. Jack's look changed. At first it was concerned, almost guilty, because he knew. He knew that Will's mental health was fading, day after day. He knew that he reassured Alana not to let him get to close. After that answer his look was calm, because now he knew that Will was going to be okay, even if it was only temporary. "What time is it, Jack?", Will asked. "It's 3 pm." Jack answered. Will closed his eyes.

"Are you okay, Will?", Alana asked. Will opened his eyes. They were standing in front of Hannibal's house. What happened? How did he get there? "Yes, thank you. Could you please tell me what time it is?" Alana took a long look at him, concerned and answered "Yes, of course. .. It's 6 pm.", then she rang the bell. After a while Hannibal opened the door, looked at Will and smiled. "Good evening, Will. Alana."

Will closed his eyes. "My name is Will Graham, it's 6 pm and I'm in Baltimore, Maryland."


End file.
